


Catch the Swing

by innie



Series: Catch the Swing [1]
Category: Political Animals
Genre: Asian-American Character, Black Character(s), Boys In Love, Character(s) of Color, Gen, Indian-American Character, Jewish Character, Korean-American Character, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Musicians, Musicians In Love, Piano, Queer Character, ragtime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24599590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Guys dig musicians, right?(Picks up just where the series ended.)
Relationships: Douglas Hammond & Thomas "T. J." Hammond, Thomas "T. J." Hammond & Anne Ogami, Thomas "T. J." Hammond/Original Male Character(s), Thomas "T.J." Hammond & Agent Clark, Thomas "T.J." Hammond & Original Female Character
Series: Catch the Swing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1975777
Comments: 11
Kudos: 14
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Catch the Swing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).



> Title from Scott Joplin, ragtime master, who explained how to play his music thus: "Play slowly until you catch the swing."

It was tempting to stay on the farm, but A, Doug and Anne were going to be fucking like crazed weasels all over the place because it was their honeymoon and they would've gotten away with eloping if it hadn't been for one meddling kid, aka him, the rainbow sheep of the Hammond family and the one who apparently couldn't budge an inch without a fleet of completely conspicuous vehicles packed to the brim with equally conspicuous security personnel, and B, he didn't think he could stand living in a place where phrases like _drunk as a skunk_ just rolled off the neighbors' tongues even as they showed up with home-baked goodies and big I'm-looking-at-a-famous-person smiles. He needed unsmiling neighbors, people who didn't give a rat's ass that he'd once lived in the White House and might have to list it as his address again in the very near future . . . or, better yet, people who understood the pleasures of sucking dick and judged that to be a perfectly acceptable way to spend a Thursday afternoon.

What he did not need was a return to DC and all its easy temptations. How had he not seen that the Dome was just tethering him to a place he hated?

He kept playing, the battered piano's keys somehow easier to see when night finally fell than they'd been at dusk, and ignored the thought that if there was such a magical place, surely he'd have found it by now.

*

"You've got a tendency to punish yourself," Doug said to him, and TJ pulled the phone from his ear to make a face at it. _Doug_ thought _he_ was self-punishing? Dougie was the most tightly wound person in the universe, who'd berate himself for days for a hair out of place. "And for swinging between extremes. Don't. Please. Don't retreat to some tiny monk's cell and shut the world out."

"I doubt I could pull off the haircut," he cracked, trying to focus only on how happy Dougie sounded, day four into his honeymoon. Day five of not being their mother's dancing monkey.

"Teej," he heard, that slurred softening of his name that he'd secretly always loved. "Call it a wedding present."

"Have you always played this dirty?"

"He's a dirty, _dirty_ boy," Anne said, apparently having grabbed the phone. TJ was surprised to find he wasn't upset at the thought of her listening in on the conversation; privacy was for other people, and anyway she'd willingly signed up for the whole Hammond nightmare.

"Doug's a champ in the sack, huh? I taught him everything he knows," he said, ready to drop the conversational thread of his immediate plans.

" _Doubt_ it," she sing-songed, and he laughed at hearing her so loose and at ease. He couldn't remember ever feeling like that, though during his latest hospital stay people had been coming out of the fucking woodwork to tell him what a happy-go-lucky kid he'd been. Yeah, sure. It was easy to be happy when you were too fucking stupid to know that your literal right to exist was going to be the most gripping issue facing the nation only a few years later.

If what he really wanted was anonymity, he couldn't shut himself up in some small town or, to use Dougie's overwrought metaphor, a monastic cell. What he really needed was a big city that didn't give two shits about him. That sounded restful beyond belief.

*

Agent Clark had a fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn that he hadn't seen in two years, since he'd become Madam Secretary's head of security, and TJ had batted his eyes — what, the guy was giving off all sorts of bicurious vibes, plus he was probably even better-looking naked — until he pretty much had a repetitive stress injury in his eyelids, only for Clark Bar to agree to talk terms out of the clear blue sky _three days later_. Delayed gratification wasn't a game that'd ever appealed to him, but if that was what got Clark off, he'd roll with it.

"There are two apartments per floor and Agent Park will occupy the one opposite you on the top floor." Clark was nothing if not efficient.

"What, you guys run in rhyming packs?" he couldn't help cracking.

"That's right. We sweep poetry slams across the country," Clark said; his deadpan was spectacular. "And if you do anything that loses me my security deposit, Park'll toss you out with the trash." Clark handed over the keys like he knew what actually holding the keys — rather than having some lackey run ahead and unlock doors — meant to him and then, just as surprisingly, high-fived him. "You got this, kid."

So he still wanted to get Clark naked, but that smile was worth a hell of a lot too.

*

It was a little sad how few possessions he actually had, and what percentage of that was leather clothing. He was _not_ going to test whether he could still fit into the skinny lizardskin pants he'd decided he needed in order to live his life as the second coming (ha, if only) of David Bowie. Well, he might. Only one way to find out.

A knock at the door saved him from the futile contortions he'd need to get the zipper up, and he figured the pants were tight enough that they weren't going anywhere. A woman in a raglan shirt that said _Cyclones_ across the chest was standing on Clark's painfully unironic welcome mat. "You just failed the test," she said, and he recognized the hardass glint in her eyes, like her skull came equipped with reflective Ray-Ban lenses instead of human eyeballs; it was a surefire sign she was his very own stormtrooper.

"You're Park?" he asked, crossing his arms defensively.

"Sangita Park," she said, showing him her identification. "You should know better than to open the door without even asking who's on the other side."

"To be fair, no one moves to New York thinking they're gonna actually meet the neighbors."

"To be fairer, I'm armed and you're not."

"To be absolutely fair, you've already got cameras everywhere and a key. Not like I can stop you from coming in and invading any scraps of privacy I've got left."

"To be frank, that sucks for you," she said, and something about her voice said that she was absolutely sincere.

"Well, get in here and you can do it up close and personal," he said, stepping aside so she could come in.

She didn't take a step forward, instead gesturing to her own door. "I was thinking more like you could come over, we could order in, and we could figure out how we were going to make this work."

"Sure, boss," he said. "I'm thinking White Castle? Since you look like if Harold and Kumar had a baby."

"Oh, Tommy boy," she said, grinning viciously, "you don't want to know what _you_ look like with your fly undone."

"I really hope you're enjoying the view," he said, not bothering to blush. He kind of liked this one.

*

It ended up not being worth the hassle to avoid Park's morning marathons — she'd have to get an alternate to watch over him for a couple of hours — and it was honestly easier to just go with her. It had nothing to do with being shown that he was trusted to behave with only one person watching over him. 

They ran in the mornings up to Grand Army Plaza and into one corner of Prospect Park, and in the evenings he'd been conned into doing yoga with her though no one willing to admire his ass in yoga pants was anywhere in the vicinity. He had a feeling the reports she gave on his behavior were entertaining even when he was too exhausted to give her anything to work with; she had a biting sense of humor that would knock his parents flat if she ever let it loose in front of them. He wondered how Doug's security person was coping with the good twin, who might finally be living his life on his own terms.

"Do you know Agent Clark?" he asked on their ninth day together, his ninth day of staunchly ignoring the gleaming Steinway in the back bedroom.

"Yes."

"Geets," he said, "would a little detail kill you?"

"Yes."

"Is the piano his or is this another plot by my heavy-handed family?"

"Is it in tune?" she asked, and that was a fair question — the answer would tell him what he needed to know.

"Let's go find out," he said. The sour sound that emanated from the instrument when he played a major chord made him wince but he smiled too. Maybe he had missed spending his time making music.

*

"I'm vetting piano tuners," Gita said, calmly shoveling in another mouthful of cold sesame noodles like she had no metabolic woes whatsoever. He, meanwhile, was going to get fat if he kept just eating scallion pancakes. He was kind of looking forward to it. What else was there to anticipate, other than his imminent greasy blubberiness, since he'd been kept waiting for a _week_ to play?

"Right now it looks like you're sitting on my couch and eating my lunch." It was a new couch — the first time he'd ever shopped for his own furniture, though he'd had to do it all online on a laptop she lent him and then took away when his urge to nest had exhausted itself — and he was watching like a hawk for the moment a single drop of her peanut sauce marred one of the cushions.

"I am multitasking," she said, completely unruffled and obnoxiously neat. "And, unlike some, _I_ am capable of delegating."

Who that was a slam against, he couldn't quite tell because his entire family was either A, uptight and fundamentally incapable of delegating, or B, lazy and unable to comprehend having responsibilities to delegate. "Sick burn," he said, cooperating in case that got her to make nice in turn.

She laughed then. "Fine. I made an appointment for tomorrow. He's coming at three. You know where the silent alarms are in each room and you will use one if you feel the least bit unsafe. You will take precautions. You ask for his name — E. B. Pinsky — before opening the door. You pay him in cash and you get a receipt." So the vetting wasn't just to make sure the guy could be trusted not to spill TJ Hammond's current address, for which the tabloids would pay a pretty penny; it was also to make sure the guy wasn't going to be providing any sort of chemical extras, not that he'd had so much as a beer since he got to Brooklyn. Geets might be a hardass but he appreciated that she let him choose how much he wanted to understand of her cryptic utterances. She held up a roll of cash that looked to his experienced eye like three hundred bucks. "You see him out of your apartment and lock the door behind him. And you thank me by making breakfast for dinner for both of us tomorrow night because if we eat any more takeout we're going to pop."

"How do you like your eggs?" he asked, as if he knew how to cook.

"You've got all day to learn how to make a cheese omelet," she said. How she got her smile to be that threatening he'd never know.

*

"E. B. Pinsky" sounded like he'd be a hundred years old, use the word _whippersnappers_ , and bitch about having to climb three flights of stairs. The guy TJ opened the door to had pink cheeks — actually fucking _apple-cheeked_ — and was at least seventy years shy of the age his name promised. Also, appealing in that take-a-second-look way, the kind where a second look turned into all night. No wonder Geets had told him to thank her later.

"Hi, I'm here for Sangita Park?" Pinsky said, pronouncing her name properly, which was probably the reason Geets had him on her shortlist in the first place. The guy adjusted a heavy-looking messenger bag on his shoulder and held out a hand to shake.

TJ looked at it for a second, having forgotten that most people touched when they first met instead of being surrounded by a bubble of bodyguards, and Pinsky dropped his hand, looking embarrassed. "No, uh, sorry, come in. My, uh . . . Gita made the appointment for me. For my piano."

"Sure, no problem." The pink was fading from the guy's cheeks, leaving them olive again. His brow crinkled in a thoughtful frown. "Have we met, because you look kind of familiar."

"If you live around here, you've probably seen me in line at Breukelen Coffee House," he said like the guy hadn't been vetted for a solid week. He couldn't get over how much camouflage Geets's mere presence was; people might think they'd seen the First Junkie around Crown Heights, but it couldn't be him, not when he was with a girl his own age, the pair of them clearly together but politely refraining from PDA. It was kind of fucking hilarious. And it seemed to work even when it had just been her voice over a phone. One of these days he'd have to get a phone of his own again, but for now it was nice to not have a number that all the scum he knew could use, and it made Geets's life easier not to have to monitor that shit in real time.

"Yeah, maybe," Pinsky said, but he was still wearing a puzzled frown. "Through here?" TJ nodded and let him lead through the railroad-style apartment, admiring the view from the back. He'd always liked the nape of a man's neck, how it could be vulnerable and strong all at once, and there were muscles underneath the clinging red henley that were sleek and lean. The ass he was going to have to learn about later, because right now the guy's messenger bag was inconveniently blocking his view.

They passed the master bedroom — painted a soft orange because Clark was apparently a fucking delightful heathen who enjoyed color rather than museum-quality wallpaper that was discreet and tasteful and so fucking boring that the paper-hangers must have wanted to gouge their eyes out — and Pinsky glanced in at the unmade bed and kept marching on to where the Steinway was silently waiting.

"Wow, what a beauty," Pinsky said, and he wasn't wrong; Clark's piano was too nice to be left to fall so disastrously out of tune. It suddenly became imperative that Pinsky understood that it wasn't his fault.

"It is," he agreed, smiling back when Pinsky smiled at him. "Just don't kill me when you hear the tone. I'm . . . subletting, and the piano was here when I got here."

"I'll leave the katana in my bag, then," Pinsky joked. There was a resounding silence, and TJ wanted to kick himself for having spent years clicking options on hook-up apps rather than developing rudimentary social skills. "Sorry, _I_ think I'm funny, but no one else seems to." He missed the smile TJ belatedly offered.

He set his battered leather bag down and opened it up, pulling out his tools. "I'm guessing your neighbors are out? This is going to get pretty loud." His hands were quick and precise and his back flexed as he opened the piano, exposing its innards. TJ was conscious of an utterly stupid feeling of relief, that a piano was beautiful from the inside out, instead of rotten at the core like he'd felt for so long. Maybe what he needed was something so purely good.

And the view he had of the tuner, bending over to lay the cover safely out of the way, was another mark in the good column.

TJ gnawed on his lower lip at the sight of him shrugging his sleeves up — seriously, _what_ was happening to him, that he was acting like a blushing virgin who'd never even heard of Grindr? — and caught the glance Pinsky threw at him. 

"Did you want to stick around?" Pinsky asked, evidently surprised. "Cause we're talking a couple of hours, minimum."

"Got nothing better to do," TJ said, then decided to tell the complete truth. "Actually, I've been playing all my life and I never saw the technical side of it. Does it bother you to have an audience?"

"At open-mic nights, no, but no one's ever offered."

TJ laughed, but maybe Pinsky wasn't cracking a joke that time, because he only smiled wryly. "I can clear out, if that's better for you. Or get you something to drink? I've got . . . water." The entire fourth floor was as dry as a baby's powdered butt, because Geets had said she never liked the taste of alcohol, which was missing the point so spectacularly he could have cried.

"Sure, I'll take a water, thanks." The way the guy's voice sounded, low and melodious, echoed in his head as he backtracked to the kitchen. The metal tumblers he'd found in the _ethnic_ section of the store — what was the fucking point of _that_ label — were pleasant to the touch and kept water cooler than glass, but more importantly they'd only dent and not shatter when he eventually had his breakdown-slash-relapse and started throwing shit. He was trying very hard not to let that possibility become an inevitability.

Pinsky took the cup and raised it in a sort of toast. "I'm Elijah, by the way. I should have said," and took a long swallow before TJ could decide how to reciprocate. Turned out Elijah made water look like sin, as it dampened his already full mouth and made it invitingly red. "Let's see how she plays." One long, strong hand dropped down to the keys and played what should have been a perfect arpeggio, but the sound was so appalling the hand was snatched back like it had been burned. Elijah put down his cup and rolled his shoulders. "Holy cats, that's awful." He didn't bother to look up or grin, but he did say, "And not your fault. Um, did you want me to walk you through what I'm doing?"

"Up to you." 

With a shy smile and a shake of his head, Elijah seemed to retreat into a meditative space, working on one string at a time, adjusting what looked like tuning pegs stripped off the scrollwork of a cello and implanted into the body of a piano. He struck the corresponding key, hard, several times, eyes closed to catch every nuance of tone and sustained length.

TJ was fine just watching. He'd been surrounded by highly competent people his whole life, but his family chose such terrible things to waste their talents on. All of the groveling and jockeying for position and having to make small talk in so many different languages — what was the fucking point? But Elijah was doing something tangible, something that would allow an instrument to come alive, to be the link between player and composer, and that had to be worth so much more.

He was getting goosebumps from watching. He was getting a fucking hard-on.

There was a bead of sweat slowly coursing down the side of Elijah's neck. His fingertips had deep grooves in them from working with the strings for hours. TJ told himself that wanting to lick the sweat away and feel those tender fingertips inside him was not the same as craving a drink or a line. Eighty-eight keys, a couple hundred strings, and he felt like he was the one being wound taut. 

Elijah finished up his work by striking each key in turn, the chromatic scale like a spiral staircase winding in dizzying loops, and then turned and grinned at him like _he'd_ done anything other than fantasize about corrupting the man whose expertise was such a turn-on.

"Try her out," Elijah said, dimples bracketing his wide mouth. TJ rose from the futon and dropped his shaky weight on the piano bench. It was lower than he'd been expecting — of course it was, Clark had towered over all of them on a regular basis — and Elijah laughed at the look on his face. "I already bought the subletter story, man; you don't need to prove it to me, but you should really have a word with the guy you're subletting from about instrument care."

TJ smirked and said, "Yeah, I'll get right on that," while raising the bench a couple of inches. What to play? Ragtime always got his fingers nice and loose, and was fun without being obnoxiously showy. He positioned his hands and started to play, the syncopated melody and the steady bass spooling out effortlessly because his fingers still had the necessary muscle memory and knew just where to go, how lightly to touch. The instrument's tone was glorious, weaving into the air around them. He got confident enough to look up at Elijah with a smile.

Elijah's big dark eyes were fixed on his hands — guess he wasn't the only one with a competence kink — and the moment kept going, the world felt like it was spinning at a tempo he could keep up with, and there was not just heat but sparks between them until Elijah said, "Holy shit, you're TJ," and it all came crashing down. 

A dissonant clamor told him he'd let his hands fall heedlessly, and that was enough to jar Elijah's eyes into snapping up and meeting his. "I recognize those hands, the way they fly over a keyboard."

 _Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,_ Miss Betty had always said, and being just a dumb kid learning his first scales, he hadn't realized why repeating that to himself as he practiced had made his father bark out a laugh and say he wouldn't be KOing anybody at the rate he was going.

"My _hands_?" he snapped, wanting to keep lashing out: _not my_ face _? not my_ dick _?_ There'd been more than a few unattributed dick pics of his on the internet; it was kind of hilarious that nearly all of the scam Grindr accounts that were supposed to be him — PledgeMyAllegiance was his favorite — had no idea that the faceless and, frankly, impressive pics they were using actually were of his junk.

"Yeah," Elijah breathed. "When you were on _Sesame Street_ , you played the piano, a Bach gigue and then 'Kitten on the Keys' with a couple of Muppets. I don't know how many times we watched that episode —"

"We?" _Sesame Street_ was fun as shit to watch with a joint, and he'd had plenty of good mornings sitting in his boxer-briefs and watching the Muppets do their thing. He hadn't been high on the show, though, not back then when his music was the one thing that seemed like it could save him from the rest of his life.

"My nephew and I watched it together all the time, but now he's a big second-grader, doesn't need Uncle Eli to find it for him on Youtube." Elijah was _still smiling_ at him, and this _had_ to be a scam of some kind, except that Geets had cleared this guy to walk into his life, hadn't she? "You're so talented."

He didn't want to make the cheap joke, but that was all he knew how to do. It'd been too long since he'd even kissed someone without the expectation of getting his dick sucked right after. Before he could say _I've got bigger . . . talents_ , Elijah, still looking at him with shining eyes, asked, "Play something else?"

He played until his back was sore and his butt was numb, until he was perched on a mere sliver of the bench because Elijah was hogging the rest while they played duets, until Geets walked in and Elijah took a look at his watch and realized he was running late and had to go.

*

"He's so _wholesome_ ," Geets said, cruelly waiting until he was out of breath to spring her assessment of Elijah on him. "Cute. Talented. Works three jobs. Has no free time."

"You mean he won't waste his free time," he panted out. She was a sadist.

She touched the tip of her nose like she was taking a sobriety test — not that she'd ever have had to take one — and made unsettling eye contact with him over her shoulder. Of course she was ahead of him, running uphill, and the fact that she'd had to slow her stride to allow him to pretend to keep pace might have been mortifying if he'd thought about it for longer than a hot minute.

"Hooking up with me is never a waste," he promised. She made sure he could see her rolling her eyes and sped up so he couldn't speak.

*

"Did you want to be a Von Trapp child?" he asked when Geets decided randomly one day — it had only been a week since . . . everything, and he was marking the time by learning one of the Goldberg Variations each day because there were literally no other demands on his unplugged time — that they were going to BAM that night to see a musical. "Is musical theater your _jam_?" He'd been secretly obsessed with puppets one long-ago summer, but he'd never really seen the point of _people_ singing their feelings.

They walked rather than taking the subway, which kept them out in the open instead of hemmed in, but also not able to get away easily if he was recognized. Geets solved the problem by holding his hand, trusting that their performative straightness would cause any opportunists to doubt themselves. "Honey, I didn't know you cared," he said, just to fuck with her a little.

She tucked herself against his side and smiled up at him. "Just stay on this side of me. Holding my gun hand is not an option."

"You say the sweetest things," he said, then looked around. "Are we going in the right direction?" Not that he knew, given that he'd spent his whole life being chauffeured around and never looking out the tinted windows. "Uh, never mind," he said when he saw the sky-high giant revolving letters saying BAM directly ahead.

He kept his back to the crowd in the lobby and put his hood up when he went to the restroom — though trying to stay anonymous at the urinals was an interesting challenge — because it was their first time out of the Crown Heights bubble and he wasn't going to mess it up, not when he was going to get to rib Geets _so hard_ for being a theater nerd. She might be a fucking saint for putting up with his fumble-fingered attempts at Bach first thing after their run each morning, but he'd only given up drugs, not his entire fucking personality.

He found her and they got to where they'd be sitting, off to one side in a little row that only had two seats. They were still close enough to the stage that they weren't going to miss anything, and he wasn't going to complain about being near the piano. Geets, looking alertly around the theater, handed him his program. Rolled into a tight tube, it became a drumstick and his thigh was the drum, and this was always the worst, the time he spent waiting for something to happen, the time that it used to be so easy to fill with a line or a bottle. She at least had something to do in scanning for threats — not that he thought anyone was really going to come after him with a weapon — but all he was capable of was sitting there and fidgeting. Maybe he should start carrying a book of crosswords or something, pretend to be an intellectual on his brother's level. Maybe that could be Doug's new gig, writing puzzles for the _Post_.

The lights dimmed and a resounding multi-octave chord poured out of the piano. TJ felt his eyes grow wide like they were marbles about to fall out of his skull and roll around on the ground when he saw that it was Elijah at the instrument, wearing a black henley and black jeans, the better to fade into the background. Elijah had his eyes on the conductor, was nodding along as the woman counted off beats, and was _smiling_ that same goddamn smile that had tripped TJ up before, and that was when Geets liberated his abused program from his fist and stuck it with hers in her bag.

Fourteen measures later, the curtain went up and the play began. TJ couldn't have named a single character by the time intermission rolled around, not when he'd been watching that one Superman curl fall onto Elijah's forehead and memorizing the movements of those broad shoulders as they drew melodies and laid down rhythms.

Geets looked monstrously smug when the house lights went up, and TJ was not even going to give her the satisfaction. "Enjoying yourself?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I be, when I've got _two_ shows to watch," she said. She was the worst.

"Does he know I'm here?"

"Why would he?" she countered. "Do you want me to make that happen?"

"I don't need you arranging play dates for me like we live in a fucking nanny state," he said. He was pretty sure he was past that stage.

"Oh, punkin," she teased, so maybe not. 

It hit him, suddenly, that he wanted to talk to Doug, that _that_ was who Geets was filling in for, not Agent Clark. Doug had always been the rational one, the one who did the protecting even when TJ fully intended to do the protecting himself, as a big brother should. That made Doug sound boring as hell, and he wasn't, he was hilarious even if he _was_ uptight, and Geets was kind of the same. "Hey," he said, as the lights dimmed briefly for the five-minute warning, "thanks," and she smiled and squeezed his arm.

Act Two Elijah had evidently run wet fingers through his hair to get it to stay put; that one taunting curl was gone. But there were the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the dark depths of his eyes to focus on, and given how hard TJ was looking, it was like there was a spotlight only on him.

The show must have been great, judging by the standing ovation the cast got when the curtain call came. TJ stood with the rest of them but only let out a resounding holler when the cast gestured at the conductor, who bowed and gave a sign for all the musicians to stand and share in the applause. Elijah turned to see who'd cheered and then his big eyes got stuck on TJ's face, and TJ grinned at him, still clapping like a crazy person or possibly a rogue seal.

"Do you even know how to play it cool?" Geets asked witheringly once he'd watched Elijah, guided along by a concerned conductor, stumble his way backstage. That ass was definitely a treasure. "Never mind. Don't be whatever you think cool is. You've already got him falling all over his own feet. Must be nice to be so pretty."

"If you can't be useful, you better hope you're ornamental," TJ said.

"Pro tip: quoting the Republican Women's Handbook is in no way a turn-on." She smiled like she knew something he didn't, and at that point, he was pretty sure that the Venn diagram of things she knew completely swallowed up his little bubble of knowledge. "Time to go home."

*

They made it home in half the time it'd taken them to walk to BAM; the soles of his boots felt hot like they'd struck sparks from the sidewalks. "You are way too wound up to sleep," Geets said, eyeing him critically, "and we shouldn't stray too far from our routine." He was jittery, and in some dim corner of his mind that wasn't thinking about how fucking gorgeous Elijah was when he was playing, TJ recognized that Geets's routine was what had kept him on an even keel for the past month. "Yoga time."

She kept it to stretches and decompressing poses, and he did feel better for it even if admitting that was low on his list of priorities. He had a feeling she knew anyway, but her psychic babysitter routine was obviously wearing him down because he was just glad that she was the one who'd been given the unenviable task of guarding his sorry ass. 

There was a tap at the door a minute after she left and standing there on the welcome mat was Elijah.

Elijah, who wasn't playing it cool or staring down at his phone to check an app to make sure he'd got his hook-up's hotel room number right. Elijah, who couldn't seem to get his wide and flexible mouth to smile, whose eyebrows were raised like a kid hoping for a present, who had his beautiful hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans. Elijah, who hadn't said a word.

Behind Elijah he could see Geets's door, open about an inch, silently close. He was sure she was still listening and shaking her head at his stupefied silence.

He had to say something. _One_ of them had to say something before they died of old age, a couple of sad mimes. "Hey," he said. Total Casanova.

It seemed to be all Elijah needed. "Hey," he said, his mouth suddenly remembering how to smile, and TJ drew him in and found out that pretty mouth knew how to kiss too, soft little presses of lips that were still smiling, so friendly, until his back was up against the glazed brick of his living-room wall and then there were teeth nipping at his lower lip, a tongue-tip tracing the shape of his mouth.

Elijah kissed like he couldn't think of a better way to spend his time.

Elijah's palms were pressed to the brick on either side of his head, and one of his own hands was skidding along that stubbled jaw to get lost in dark hair and the other was pressed to the small of his back, dragging him forward like the gravitational pull between them wasn't enough. It wasn't — his skin was getting hotter, tingling, but it was nothing to the heat of Elijah's bare skin brushing against his — and it was — he couldn't say how long they were locked together, upright against the pleasing roughness of his wall.

Elijah pulled back and sucked in a breath, and TJ kept his eyes open as those talented fingertips touched his face, sweeping over his cheekbone and cradling his jaw when a thumb smeared lightly across his mouth. He pressed a kiss to that thumb and Elijah shivered like the breath had been punched out of him.

"I don't know how you do it," Elijah said, and TJ was hit all over again by the power of that voice, dark and sweet at the same time even when he was hoarse with emotion. Elijah reached up to stroke his uncooperative hair away from his overheated skin and TJ forgot the question he was going to ask. "How you can be so brave all the time."

He laughed it off. "That's not the first word that springs to mind when my name is mentioned."

Elijah didn't let him. "So they don't know. I do. I see you."

Of course he had to cheapen the moment. "You could see a whole lot more of me."

Elijah grinned and sank down to his level. "Show me what you got, then," he said, and bit him on the soft underside of his jaw, pushing his heartbeat into an unsteady, syncopated gallop.

*

The feeling of those hands running down his arms made him press his cheek harder into the decadent softness of his sheets. He moaned at the rough heat of Elijah's tongue dragging up his spine and then rolled over, needing to kiss him again, to hear all of the sounds he could draw out of him. Elijah's mouth was soft against his, undemanding and irresistible, and TJ couldn't remember another moment when he'd ever felt this good. He didn't even need a hand on his dick, just the heat of Elijah's bared body against his, the way they rubbed together as they kissed enough to make him spill over in no time at all, and it felt too good — Elijah made him feel so wholly good — for him to worry over how soon he'd shot off. He got a hand down between them and coaxed Elijah into coming too, and his bed was a mess and he didn't give a damn.

Elijah, sweetly come-dumb, fumbled for him, finally getting an arm around him and hauling him over until he was draped across the strong, warm body in his bed. TJ dipped his head down to kiss him. Elijah smiled so TJ was mostly kissing teeth, and all their spunk was still sticking to their skin, but TJ wasn't about to budge an inch.

"See? Brave," Elijah said, his hand smoothing down TJ's spine before his fingers started to play like the vertebrae he found were piano keys. TJ concentrated on not being ticklish.

"You're the one who's gonna be interrogated over breakfast in the morning," TJ pointed out when he'd pulled himself together long enough to speak, "and Geets is a fucking hardass."

"I'll take my chances with your badass matchmaker."

"Shit, she's gonna be so smug." He could just _see_ the smirk she was going to put on when she saw Elijah wearing just boxers and TJ's softest sweatshirt.

"I can live with that," Elijah said, like he could see that vision of the morning too and he liked what he saw. "And we can bribe her." A kiss against his throat and TJ shivered from the rasp of Elijah's stubble. "I make the best cheese omelet you've ever had."

"Mmm," TJ said, not knowing what he was saying. "Secret weapon. Good to know." He mumbled the last words into Elijah's mouth as they rolled over and worked each other back up, picking up the tempo but knowing they had all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, that's Sebastian Stan as TJ. Bonus points for anyone who figures out the actor playing the other lovely boy. (I kind of want to keep writing them. Scratch that - I definitely am.)


End file.
